Southern Bell Tel. & Tel. Co. v. McCook

• Decision Date: 31 August 1977
• Docket Number: No. 49837,49837
• Citation: 355 So.2d 1166
• Parties: SOUTHERN BELL TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH COMPANY, Petitioner, v. Virginia G. McCOOK, Employee, and Florida Industrial Relations Commission, Respondents.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

Page 1166

355 So.2d 1166

SOUTHERN BELL TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH COMPANY, Petitioner, v. Virginia G. McCOOK, Employee, and Florida Industrial Relations Commission, Respondents.

No. 49837.

Supreme Court of Florida.

Aug. 31, 1977.

Rehearing Denied April 5, 1978.

Peter L. Dearing of Mahoney, Hadlow & Adams, Jacksonville, for petitioner.

C. Wayne Alford of Jacobs, Sinoff, Edwards, Alford & Burgess, Jacksonville, for respondents.

ENGLAND, Justice.

By petition for a writ of certiorari we are asked to review a decision of the Industrial Relations Commission which approves an award of workmen's compensation benefits. We have jurisdiction under Article V, Section 3(b)(3) of the Florida Constitution pursuant to Section 440.27, Florida Statutes (1975). It is our conclusion that the Commission's decision departs from the essential requirements of law in that it violates fundamental principles underlying Florida's workmen's compensation statute, and that the decision must be quashed.

The facts of this case are undisputed. Virginia McCook had been an employee of Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph Company for many years without accident or injury. In November 1974, she had occasion to use the restroom during a regularly scheduled break. When she attempted to use the toilet tissue, it fell to the floor. While seated, she reached over to pick up the tissue and suddenly experienced a sharp pain across her back which caused a grabbing sensation. After a few minutes she was able to return to her work, and she was able to finish the day on the job. That evening, while at home, the pain returned and she became disabled.

Later diagnosis and treatment established conclusively that McCook had a congenital abnormality in her lower back consisting of an extra vertebra and one large nerve root where there should have been two smaller nerve roots. The pain initially felt at work and later experienced at home was diagnosed to have resulted from pressure on the nerve root in the area of the extra vertebra, "triggered" by Mrs. McCook's movement in bending over while seated. It is conceded by all parties that the same occurrence could have taken place at any time or place she might have made a similar movement, or one having the same effect on the nerve root, and that the manifestation of pain would have been identical.

When the claim for benefits was presented to the judge of industrial claims, Southern Bell conceded that the episode of pain occurred during the course of employment, and McCook conceded that there was no external trauma or injury which precipitated the pain. On these facts the judge held that McCook's act of bending to pick up toilet tissue during working hours constituted an "accident arising out of and in the course of employment", and awarded benefits. On review the Commission affirmed the award in a form order.

The only legal issue in this case is whether McCook suffered an "injury", which is defined by Section 440.02(6), Florida Statutes (1975), as "personal injury or death by accident arising out of and in the course of employment . . . ." There are three separate elements to this definition, each of which must be proved before a compensable injury can be found to exist. For the purposes of this case, we assume that McCook suffered an "accident" ¹ which occurred "in the course of employment." ² The accident to McCook, however, is simply not one "arising out of . . . employment", and we refuse to accept McCook's implied invitation to judicially repeal this latter requirement. ³

In Bituminous Casualty Corp. v. Richardson, 148 Fla. 323, 4 So.2d 378 (1941), we adopted the following language from the Illinois Supreme Court's decision in School v. Industrial Commission, 366 Ill. 588, 591, 10 N.E.2d 360, 362 (1937):

"The phrases 'arising out of' and 'in the course of employment' are used conjunctively. The words 'arising out of' refer to the origin or the cause of the accident while the words 'in the course of employment' refer to the time, place, and circumstances under which the accident occurs."

We elaborated on the "arising out of" requirement in Suniland Toys & Juvenile Furniture, Inc. v. Karns, 148 So.2d 523, 524 (Fla.1963), where we said that a compensable injury

"must have originated in some risk connected with the employment or flowing as a natural consequence from the employment."

These holdings recognize the universal principle of workmen's compensation law that an idiopathic condition which results in injury to the worker does not "arise out of" employment unless the employment in some way contributes to the risk or aggravates the injury. ⁴

In applying this principle to date, this Court has been careful to distinguish between physical damage suffered solely as a result of an idiopathic condition, and that suffered because of the combination of an idiopathic condition and the work place. We have held, for example, that the mere showing of an epileptic seizure, without more, does not prove a causal connection with the employment, ⁵ although hot and strenuous working conditions which induce an epileptic seizure do create a right to recovery. ⁶ Similarly, we have held that where an employee collapses solely due to an internal physical malfunction, the resulting physical damage does not arise out of the employment. ⁷

Although research has revealed no decision of this Court identical to this case on its facts, an Arizona decision may be as close as it is possible to get. In Sacks v. Industrial Commission, 13 Ariz.App. 83, 474 P.2d 442 (1970), the worker suffered from a pre-existing lower back instability which was aggravated into a herniation of her lumbar discs when she arose from a toilet during a work break. The Arizona Court of Appeals held that there had been an "accident" which occurred "in the course of employment", but that since the risk of disc herniation was one peculiar to the worker and there was no basis to find that the structure or conditions of the place of employment contributed to the risk, the physical damage did not "arise out of the employment".

We believe the Sacks decision should be followed in Florida. McCook suffered from an idiopathic condition which manifested itself for the first time during the course of employment, for reasons entirely extraneous to her job conditions or duties. There was no causal connection whatsoever between the employment and the aggravation. She simply...